How to Host a Virtual Event

The world today is completely connected, and that means you don’t always have to find a physical meeting space for your event; you can do it virtually instead. Rather than booking a venue that everyone has to get to, possibly at great expense, hosting a virtual event means that your attendees can join in from the comfort of their own home or office or anywhere they want to be.

One of the great benefits of a virtual event is that you can include speakers and attendees from all around the globe, something that wouldn’t necessarily be possible if you were hosting a physical event instead. It’s clear that virtual events aren’t just meetings of the future; they’re taking place now, perhaps more than ever, and if you’re going to host one you’ll need to know how.

The first thing you’ll need to do when hosting a virtual event is to choose the right tech. To do this, you’ll need to think about your attendees first. Are they a younger audience who might be happy with mobile-optimised services that don’t require a huge amount of login data or effort? Or perhaps they’re the kind of audience who would prefer something a little more secure, perhaps even with higher production values.

Knowing this means you can search around for the right platform to host your event from and give your attendees real value for money.

Over the past year, more and more of us have started working from home, conversing with our work colleagues via video calling and similar methods. In order to ensure that you’re going to have people attend your online event, you’re going to need to make it very different from the day to day information that everyone can get. After all, what is going to entice someone to switch off from one screen and switch onto another?

One way to encourage more people to attend your virtual event is to have a special guest. A big name in your industry, a well-known speaker, someone who garners respect and who people will want to hear from, will always work out well.

Once someone signs up for your event, you can give them something extra to enjoy during the time they’re going to spend online with you. If you’re hosting a wine tasting evening, you will need to send the wine, of course, but perhaps you could also send a nicely catered hamper to pair with it. If you’re hosting a party, you could send some decorations to get everyone in the mood to join in.

Although this added extra is going to cost you more money, it could be the difference when it comes to real engagement. Having a lot of people attend your virtual event but not really pay any attention or simply having on in the background isn’t going to increase your sales or help those who are logged on, so anything you can do that will make them listen is crucial.